Upscayl tutorial: comparing models on eight images

Upscayl is presented as a free, open source image upscaler for Linux, macOS and Windows that processes photos locally. The tutorial explains model selection and compares results across eight images, including a portrait, a game screenshot, blurry text and a pocket watch.

The workflow covers importing an image by drag and drop, clipboard paste or the file browser, choosing a model and setting an output folder. The speaker also demonstrates the before-and-after slider and PNG, JPG and WebP export options. For computers with multiple graphics cards, he recommends checking the GPU ID setting to select the dedicated GPU.

In these tests, the speaker favors Remacri and High Fidelity for hardware details, frescoes and text. Remacri, Ultramix and Ultrasharp preserve the portrait's blurred background better than Standard, while Light and High Fidelity give his GTA Vice City screenshot the preferred cleanup. Digital Art changes its appearance but distorts text and minimap details. These judgments apply to the examples shown rather than every image.

Double Upscayl runs processing twice. The speaker warns that it can create very large files, slow the computer or cause crashes. He uses it with Remacri on the smallest watch image and reports clearer Roman numerals, but incomplete gears. The comparison with the original high-resolution photo makes the limitation explicit: a sharper result is not a faithful recovery of every lost detail.